


The Modern Angel's Guide to Picking Up Crowley

by SanSanFanFan



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale tries to flirt, Fluff, M/M, it goes as well as you'd expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 07:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19224898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SanSanFanFan/pseuds/SanSanFanFan
Summary: Everything is just the same after the almost-pocalypse. Which is good for the world as it hasn't become a puddle of burning goo. But its also bad for a pining Crowley.Until one-day things aren't the same. They're worse.All because Aziraphale looks for advice in all the wrong places!For https://tio-trile.tumblr.com/ as a gift in thanks of their fab Good Omens art works!





	The Modern Angel's Guide to Picking Up Crowley

Of course, Crowley thinks to himself sometimes in lonely moments in his flat, the whole point of stopping Armageddon was to keep things just the same as they always had been. The Horde was still in Hell. The Host was still in Heaven. Somewhere in a wood near Tadfield the Antichrist was still knowing everything about anything while his hellhound tagged along at his heels. The ‘man in the street’ was still the man in the street, and not the ‘smear of red on the ground’. Politicians were still shagging about. Musicians were still discovering rock’n’roll, again. Teenagers were still inventing sex. Idiots with their fingers close to big scary red buttons were still idiots. And London chugged along as always, grimy and stinking, its streets still paved with more shit than gold. And… and… he and the angel were still… what they were.

It was true that the intervals between their casual meetings had shrunk, now that they were a few months out from the almost-alypse. No more bumping into each other every hundred years or so, now debriefs about any sign of Heavenly or Hellish interest happened often enough to appear on the same page of Aziraphale’s paper diary – the one with a week to view. They even had a mostly regular Friday evening dinner ‘thing’ at wherever Crowley suggested based on the restaurant reviews he now circled with a red pen in the previous Sunday’s magazines.

But even with the post-almost-alypse ‘switcheroo’ that they’d pulled off - when they’d been as close as two beings of immense celestial and diabolic power could be - they were _still_ pretty much as they had been for the past six thousand years or so. More than adversaries, but less than that ordinary ‘man in the street’ occasionally assumed as he passed them by.

So alone in his flat, between their Friday dinners and their walks in the park, Crowley thinks about things staying the same and the value of that. It could be worse, it could have all ended. They could have ended up as a part of that puddle of goo. Could be worse.

Then it gets worse.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and the bookshop is in that quantum state of open and not open depending on whether the human peering at the sign can follow the intricacies of Aziraphale’s clauses and subclauses about its opening times. Crowley has just ‘popped by’ to lounge in one of his softly upholstered chairs and to mention a mouse on the underground that gave him a funny look the other day and hear the angel’s assurances that it was probably not a spy from down below when suddenly Aziraphale laughs in an obviously false way.

“Hahaha. Did you know your nose moves when you speak? It’s kind of quaint.”

Crowley looks at the angel over his sunglasses. “You what, now?”

“Hahaha, you’re a goof.”

Crowley looks about for either heavenly agents who’ve radiated the angel’s brains with celestial dumb rays, demonic humours, or a candid camera.

“My nose is pretty pointy. I suppose it moves when I talk.” He says casually, “Its not something I’ve ever really thought about before.”

“Ahh. Ah.” Aziraphale looks like a man drowning at sea, flailing about for something to grasp onto. “I like your eyes. Hey… are you wearing coloured contacts???”

Before Crowley can snap at him - of course he’s not bloody-well wearing contacts and of all people he should effing-well know! - the angel bumbles on but the words are flat and almost as though he’s reciting something, “Oh my god, no way, you are-”

“What the?! Look I don’t know what’s wrong with you today, but I think I should go.” He stands up and moves towards the door, where on the other side a human is scribbling notes, trying to work out the equation of the shop’s opening times.

“No! I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was saying!” Aziraphale flaps his hands and intercepts him. “I’m sorry, something strange came over me!”

Crowley narrows his eyes behind his glasses and looks down at his friend, who has always been a celestial manifestation of social awkwardness on earth. It's not the first time Aziraphale has blurted out something stupid to him – there was that time in Rome when he asked if Crowley was still a demon…

“Okay, look, forget it. I’ll see you soon-”

“We could go to the cinema?!” Aziraphale interrupts his departure again.

“The cinema? You hate going to the cinema. You told me you have done ever since you went to see that one about the Man in the Moon in 1902.”

The angel seemed to shudder, “I just don’t like horror films.”

Crowley stifles a laugh. “Yes, I remember now, you like those dull black and white arty films where someone stares at the horizon for forty minutes while talking about their mother. No, thank you.”

He goes to move forward again and suddenly there is a gentle hand on his arm, “I can pick us a good film, trust me.”

Crowley looks down at the soft pink fingers gently holding his sleeve, ever so slightly tightening as they rest there, pressing gently on his flesh underneath. It’s the first time that they’ve touched since they switched back after tricking their respective bosses. Even if the angel’s acting bloody _odd_ today, he can’t help but feel the full force of his blood pumping through his heart at that very moment. The cinema? It's something _new_ , something different.

“Alright,” He decides, “But no 3D films. I hate the glasses, so ugly.”

“3D films?! How does that wor- Oh, ah, yes, of course! I’ll even buy your ticket.” He smiles warmly, and it mostly makes up for his weirdness earlier.

***

The angel’s done alright with the film, actually. A mid-week, mid-afternoon showing of a film with lots of things that go ‘boom!’, and they’re the only ones in the cinema so he can slip off his glasses and relax a bit. There’s maybe something vaguely resembling a plot and Crowley has a pick and mix bag full of waxy red lips and those sherbet flying saucers that explode on his tongue and make his head fizz. Yes, the angel’s done okay.

Aziraphale doesn’t look all that happy about his success though, and it's not just because he’s flinching every time someone blows something up – although he might also be doing that because of the awful quips that they fling out immediately afterwards – he also looks… nervous. _More_ nervous.

But then Crowley is distracted by something going ‘kaboom!’ and he doesn’t notice Aziraphale beginning a large yawn until the angel’s right arm is almost resting on his shoulders. Caught by very _pleasant_ surprise by the… the… _touch_ , Crowley’s wings instinctively unfurl and push him almost off his chair and into the seats in front. He’s pinned there as they tangle with the other seats behind them and with the angel who is apologising again.

“What the hel- heaven, angel?!” He hisses as he tries to fold them up again and give himself enough space to get out and away from whatever creature has body-snatched Aziraphale.

“Oh no! Crowley, I’m sorry!”

But he’s staggering down the aisle and through the dark as small black, _bent_ , feathers flutter away behind him.

***

It’s a good week or more before he can bring himself to get in touch with Aziraphale. There’s the embarrassment of him reacting like a schoolboy during sex ed and having to dash out of the classroom with a hand over his trousers – if his trousers contained black wings with a span of ten feet. But there’s also the uncertainty about what Aziraphale was actually, bloody well, trying to do! Was he really using the old ‘yawn and grope’ move? Crowley knows what that move looks like, even if it’s not something he’s ever tried for himself. Or wanted to.

And in that week he also gets his first ever delivery of flowers. It’s an eclectic bunch that the delivery man hands over to him with a cheeky smile. Crowley knows Aziraphale well enough to know that he’s spent a good hour or so going through some Victorian ‘Secret Language of Flowers’ book that he’s had for years to pick out a specific message for him. But Crowley just uses the app ‘Flowr’ (humans have an app for everything these days – another of his great ideas) and takes a picture of the bunch, so it can auto-translate.

“FORGIVE ME. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. YOU’RE A WONDERFUL FRIEND. ANXIOUS TO PLEASE. LASTING AFFECTION. STUPIDITY.” The app says in its robotic voice. It doesn’t quite have the sweet tones of the angel, but its enough to get him smiling again, especially when he gets it to play “LASTING AFFECTION” again. And again.

He swings by the bookshop a day or so after the delivery – he can’t have the angel think he’s dropped everything to rush over because he’s sent him a bloody zinnia! – and interrupts the angel deep in a yellowing paperback.

“Oh! Crowley! I wasn’t expecting you! How are your wings now?!” He rambles as he moves the book behind his back.

“Fine. Fine. I’ll sort them out soon. Look, thank you for the flowers but- what’s that you’re hiding?!”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“Angel,” He growls a warning.

“Just a book I got in a job lot from an estate sale, nothing important.”

Crowley narrows his eyes and the angel brings the book back around and passes it to him. It’s a newer book for the angel, a paperback only a decade or two old, but it stinks of stale smoke and frustration. Crowley starts laughing as everything starts to make much more sense.

“‘The Modern Man’s Guide to Picking Up Women’! Oh angel, do we need to have ‘the talk’? You are no more a modern man than I am a human woman. Although… sometimes its been fun to look like one.” He shrugs before getting back on track again, “But there’s not going to be anything in here to help you with… ohhhh.” He realises what he’s been assuming, “It is for helping you, with me, isn’t it? That’s where all this nonsense has come from?”

He flicks through it and finds what he already suspects is going to be in there. “‘Negging’. Seriously?! That was one of our inventions in the 90s and I’m still embarrassed about it!”

“The quotes on the cover made it sound like the author really knew his stuff,” murmurs the angel, his wings slowly emerging and pointing downwards in dejection.

“This guy who died, the owner of the estate and the books you bought up, did he… did he die surrounded by loved ones and children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren?” Crowley struggles to keep in his laughter.

“Ummm, no, now you mention it he was single- Oh, I see!!”

“There’s no guide to flirting that’s going to help you to ‘pick me up’.” Crowley smirks and steps closer to the angel, “You can’t try and pull off the old ‘yawn and grope’ in a cinema and expect it to work on a demon whose seen all the moves humans have been trying since Eve first winked at Adam.”

“I actually prefer to call it the ‘yawn and _hug_ ’,” Aziraphale says dejectedly, and his wings lower even more.

“Oh, come on now, angel.” He curls a finger under his angel’s chin and gently lifts his head, so their eyes meet again. “You don’t have to fake a yawn – because we both know you never actually get tired – in order to get closer to me.” He smiles softly at him, “In fact, all you probably need to do is call me. Or share a story from your day with me. Or smile at me. Or unfurl those glorious wings of yours that you _never_ take proper care of. Because right now you’ve got me itching to do something about them. Come on, sit down for a moment.”

He takes a hold of Aziraphale’s hand and leads him a wooden chair where he can properly get at them, smoothing and spacing them carefully.

“But you’re the one with the bent feathers!”

“Hush, angel.” He’s humming with pleasure as he settles them neatly, enjoying the cool smoothness of each vane as his hands wander over them. Aziraphale’s shoulders soften and the angel starts to enjoy the feeling. Crowley feels the angel’s soft hand reaching back to run up and down his calf and thigh. He shudders with pleasure.

“Even with it taking me six thousand years of flirting with you to get this far, and I never once thought that there was a human who could teach me how to do it better. Books are dangerous things, angel!” Crowley realises how blissed out the angel is when he doesn’t immediately defend his beloved books. Or notice _quite how long_ this has been going on for Crowley. But right now he doesn’t even care.

Later, when they have moved upstairs together, wings touching as they step upwards, the first book that Aziraphale has ever thrown out sits alone and forgotten in the wastepaper basket.


End file.
